


Kiss of Life

by swan_tower (russian_blue)



Series: Twisted Fairy Tales [3]
Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, La Belle au bois dormant | Sleeping Beauty - Charles Perrault, Sleeping Beauty – All Media Types
Genre: Lovecraftian, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/swan_tower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rated T for creepy Lovecraftian elements.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss of Life

In faraway lands, the tale is a romantic one. She sleeps in her tower, in the castle surrounded by thorns, awaiting a prince who is brave and true of heart, for only the kiss of such a man will end her slumber and bring her back to life. She has waited for many centuries, they say, and many princes have gone, fighting their way through the dark wood and climbing the thousand stairs to the tower room, but none have been pure and noble enough to wake her.

Some tellers say that, distraught by their failure and this judgment of their character, the princes fling themselves from the tower window and fall to their deaths below.

If that were true, the courtyard of the sleeping castle would be littered with bones.

Closer to home, the stories change. The princes, they say, do not die of broken hearts and wounded pride. They do not reach the tower room at all. Long before they have a chance to lay their mouths against the perfect rosebud lips, long before they catch sight of the graceful, slender hands, they fall prey to the creatures that wait beneath the thorny boughs of the wood. And if they survive their trials there, then they meet their ends at the hands (or claws, or jaws) of the beings that walk the halls of the darkened keep, more foul by far than their forest-dwelling kin. And if they win their way past these as well, they perish in battle against the guardian who stands on the stairs of the tower -- but most never make it that far. The curse on the castle and its sleeping resident was placed by a powerful, jealous sorceress (or fairy, or stepmother-queen), and she vowed, as she was slain by knights, that her victim should never wake; and her blood flowed out and became the monsters of the wood and the hall, and her malevolent spirit the guardian on the stairs.

In the village that once served the keep, they tell another tale, and that is the darkest of all.

They tell their tale to any who pass through, but most princes and knights and wandering adventurers dismiss their words as the superstitions of credulous peasants (forgetting that their own peasants' tales set them on their road to begin with), or else assume that the villagers do not want the curse lifted -- for then they would lose the one thing that distinguishes their collection of squalid hovels from the thousand others like it.

The idealistic young prince who approaches the wood now never even had the opportunity to disregard the peasants' tales, for he took a vow, when he departed on his quest, to speak with no one until his task was done. A foolish vow, which lengthened his road by months and leagues; he searched in many wrong places, all unknowing, before finding his way here. He is not quite so young now, and his idealism has tarnished along the way. But at last he has found the wood, and beyond it lies the castle, and in the castle's topmost tower sleeps the lady whom he seeks.

He rides into the wood, his sword unsheathed.

The impassable forest of thorns disappoints him; it is dark and overgrown, to be sure, and thickly populated with briars, but the spines on these are not the sword-length blades he had been led to expect. He makes his way through with no more difficulty than an ordinary tangled forest might give him, and sees no horrors along the way. There is no sign, in all the wood, of any prince or knight slain here before him.

The villagers go blackberrying in the wood every year; they could have told him it was safe.

On the other side of the wood he finds the castle, walls cloaked in ivy, gate hanging open. Sword still in hand, the prince steps through. The courtyard stones are cracked by frost, and grass has grown between them, but there are no scattered bones, no fallen blades, left by despairing suitors. Above stands the tower, the tiny panes of its window glinting in the light -- shut against the elements, not left open by one leaping to his death.

The villagers never venture as far as this, but they know the courtyard is clear.

The great door of the keep also stands open, and dead leaves have drifted into the hall. They crunch dryly under the prince's boots as he walks in, the only sound he can hear. The light is failing now, the day having passed while he navigated the wood, and so he pauses to work flint and steel, until a spark catches in the torch he brought with him -- he knew there would be darkness. By the torch's flickering light, he searches the corners for threats, but finds nothing.

The villagers could have told him that.

He begins to question this all as he looks for the stairs. Where have all the others gone? Is it mere fiction, that men have come here before him? Could it be he is the first? All the stories agree that the questors have never returned, but perhaps they never reached this place at all. Perhaps they perished far from here; the road is, after all, dangerous. Or perhaps they came, failed to wake the sleeper, and refused to return home with their shame.

Perhaps there _is_ no sleeper.

But he never asked the villagers for answers.

He finds the stairs and climbs, half-wondering if there is a guardian lurking here who will devour him, bones and boots and all, half-wondering if the tower room will be empty when he arrives.

Nothing meets him on the stairs.

As he opens the heavy door at the top of the stairs, he is of two minds. One envisions triumph and fame, the tale of how a youngest son, lacking any hope of inheritance at home, won a beautiful princess and restored her castle -- their castle -- to its former glory. The other fears mockery, the jeers of those around him when they learn he spent years on a foolish, pointless quest.

All thought vanishes when he opens the door.

The dusty, half-rotted curtains around the bed stir slightly as the air is disturbed. The prince scarcely sees them, eyes fixed instead on the figure lying atop the mouldering coverlet, hands neatly clasped across her breast. Amidst the decay, her hair shines like incorruptible gold. Her long lashes lie against her cheeks, hinting at the beauty they hide, and her perfect rosebud lips await his gentle kiss.

There _is_ a sleeper, and there _is_ a curse -- and the villagers know well the nature of both.

The prince drops his torch to the floor, where it dies swiftly, unnaturally. In the sudden gloom, he walks toward her, boots automatically lifting over the debris that blocks his way. He spares no thought for the debris; all his attention is fixed on her. She is a beauty beyond compare, and his skin aches, as though too small to contain his adoration. Trembling in anticipation of the sight of her eyes, he bends over and gives her the kiss of life.

An instant later, he stumbles backward, no longer recognizable as the idealistic young prince who set out on a noble quest, nor even as the older, more travel-weary prince who climbed the tower stairs. He is scarcely recognizable as human. His skin has shrunk tight against his bones and his muscles have withered away; he collapses to the ground, a skeletal, desiccated thing, dying among the scattered bones and rusted blades of all the other brave young men the villagers could not persuade or prevent from coming to this tower.

The sleeper sighs once, but does not wake.

The curse still holds, for which the villagers give thanks every morning. Her prison of sleep still contains her. But one day it will fail; one day, she will absorb enough life from others to open her terrible eyes, to rise from her bed and walk again. On that day, the skies will darken, and she will come forth from the castle once more, sweeping the bones of her suitors before her, bestowing her ravenous kiss on all who cannot flee her path.

But that day is not today. For now, she sleeps, waiting for her next kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in _Beneath the Surface_ , ed. Tim Deal, 2008. Since I now have it up for free on my [website](http://www.swantower.com/index.html), though, I figured I might as well post it here.


End file.
